


Alone

by ironyruinedmylife



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 13 days of Hartmon, Angst, Cisco's first vibe, For real this is so mcfreakin Dark, Gen, Ghosts, Harribard has Feelings but is still a Very Bad Person, poor Hartley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 07:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8391988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironyruinedmylife/pseuds/ironyruinedmylife
Summary: 'Cisco stared, horrified, at him, and Hartley saw his reflection in his eyes, he was bloodied, hair matted and clothes stained a horrible, terrible crimson, his eyes were so wide and bright and glassy that he barely recognised them. His glasses were cracked and his skin was pale, almost blue. No wonder he was scared. '





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> IMPORTANT: When the accelerator went off, Hartley was trying to help, thus he was in the very lower levels of the Labs, he had snuck in and no one knew he was there, he was caught and wounded by a falling wall and trapped under the rubble, the wave of Science and Meta-ness turned him into a meta but he was very injured and no one was looking for him, so by the time anyone came down there he was pretty far gone and chose to die there. He doesn't remember this at first. No one finds his body for a good long time, and not yet in this fic, as no one is looking for him except harrison n cisco n caitlin since no one really liked him and in the aftermath of the explosion Hartley Rathaway is not on the top of any list. As a ghost he is attached to Harrison, and cannot be more than about 30 metres from him at any time. This is probably the worst thing I've done to poor Hartley.
> 
> Oh and Cisco can also vibe the 'ghost' dimension, which is what im going off.
> 
> Gifted to eh2zie365 for letting me ramble at them about this in a very unorganized and general crappy manner, thank you for letting me talk at you and being so patient with my nerdy ideas!

Hartley frowned. He felt... _fuzzy_ , for lack of a better word, like his head was filled to bursting with cotton wool, his limbs tingled and he felt cold, _so cold_. Nothing hurt, per say, not how it did after the accelerator had-  
  
 _Bright lights. Walls crumbling. Screaming. Crying._  
  
-Hartley frowned again, refocusing on his current experience, he slowly opened his eyes, squinting in the harsh light, a hand coming up to shield his face from the blinding sight, blinking blearily as he tried to move, pulling himself to his hands and knees before he glanced around again, feeling slightly braver. The last thing he remembered was the accelerator malfunctioning, exactly as he had predicted, people screaming as the building collapsed. He had... _hurt_. Endless, mind numbing pain, and then the wave had hit and he couldn't _breathe_ , eyes watering as he lay motionless, twitching what limbs he could. There had been no escape so he had shut his eyes and pretended not to exist, the game he had played as a child when his father had been angry enough to play their twisted hide and seek. And now he was here.   
  
Where _here_ was his brain hadn't processed yet, but he was working on it.  
  
Oddest of all, he didn't _hurt_. There was no ringing, no sensory overload, no shattering pain at the slightest sound. He couldn't hear molecules shifting against each other. He couldn't hear much of anything, really, maybe some voices in the background if he strained. He remembered black spots dancing at the edge of his vision   
  
It had hurt. It had hurt so _badly_ for so _long_ and then…then…Hartley frowned.   
  
It had been _dark_ , too dark to see. And now he could see, the light was so blinding that he couldn’t actually register anything, but at least he was processing the light. But how had darkness turned into light? There had been rubble above him, and he couldn't move. He had been caught by a piece of collapsing wall, and had fallen as the rest of the wall had followed.   
  
But that meant that…  
  
Either he was in hospital.  
  
Or…  
  
 _Or…_  
  
Hartley blinked, glancing around. The blinding light had taken shape, he was in Star Labs. _He was in Star Labs._ How…Hartley frowned, glancing down at his blood stained clothes, then back up at the people in uniform milling about, he walked closer to one, and tried to get their attention, talking morphing into shouting into _screaming_ because _could they not hear him? Could they not see him?_ Hartley trembled as he gave up, stumbling back a few paces as he realised that to the people here he did not exist.   
  
_He did not exist._   
  
Hartley flinched and ignored the mounting pressure on his chest at the thought of that. No, _no_ , cogito ergo sum, he _thought_ , therefore he _was_. He _was_ real. He had to be real. Then Hartley decided that, like any good hypothesis, that statement needed _proof_ , so he walked back towards the group, determined to make someone notice him, _dammit_ , why couldn't they _see_ him? He made it to about a metre before collision before something deep in his chest began aching, he took another step only to discover that he couldn’t move.  
  
The pressure on his chest increased.   
  
He tried to take another step, and began to panic when he was tugged backwards, like there was a hook between his shoulder blades that someone had just tugged, _hard_. Hartley ran in the other direction, and was stopped into dead, silent stillness at about thirty paces. He couldn’t _breathe_. He couldn’t _think_ , _he couldn’t- he couldn’t-_  
  
Hartley sank to the floor, a shaking, bloodied hand held up to cover his mouth as he tried to remember how to breathe, wheezing as panic fogged his mind. Why couldn’t anyone _see_ him, _why_ couldn _’_ t anyone _hear_ him _, why couldn’t he move, why wasn’t he dead, why-_  
  
Why wasn’t he _dead?_  
  
He should have been dead, he had been trapped under rubble with a severe head wound and-  
  
 _Hartley couldn’t even scream anymore, he lay twitching, head pounding as his DNA rewrote itself, he felt blood pouring down the side of his face and onto his clothes in that back of his mind, most of it preoccupied with the extraordinary pain he felt, then he realised that he was probably dying, and that the thought of that should probably have inspired emotion more than a weak ‘finally’ in a voice that sounded startlingly like his fathers._   
  
-Hartley blinked, rubbing his chest as he came back to himself, he was huddled on the floor of Star Labs, his knees drawn up to his chest and he seemed to have moved since he had…panicked. He sniffed and scrubbed at his eyes, ignoring the blood that rubbed off on his sleeves, he rose to his feet, grimacing as the world span worryingly.   
  
He was jerked back by the hook between his shoulder blades.   
  
Hartley blinked, the panic rising again.   
  
And then he was being pulled backwards across the room, scrambling to stay upright as he was tugged along by an invisible chord, headed rapidly towards a wall and Hartley barely had time to squeeze his eyes shut before he collided with-  
  
Oh.   
  
He opened his eyes after several long seconds of stillness.   
  
He had…gone _through_ the wall?   
  
“I’m so sorry, Cisco.”   
  
Hartley blinked, his eyes widening as he stiffened. That _voice_. But _no_ , he couldn’t be here…except, Hartley’s traitorous mind whispered, he _could_ be. If anyone had the sheer luck to escape a major explosion unscathed or at least unbothered by any injury he might have acquired it would be _him_.   
  
Hartley turned. Harrison was sat in front of him, his arm in a cast and his body bound by a wheelchair, his face bruised and bloody-  
  
 _Hartley could hear people yelling. He could hear an awful lot now. It **hurt**. It hurt so much he couldn’t breathe, or was that because of the heavy rock balanced on his shattered ribcage. Hartley didn’t know. He didn’t care either. He didn’t care about the pain. He didn’t care about the search parties just metres from him. He didn’t care about **living**. _  
  
_“If someone is hurt down here, make a noise.” Someone called. Hartley briefly considered it. Then he simply closed his eyes and let his painful breathing slow. He didn’t **care** if he lived. _  
  
-Harrison was speaking to Cisco. Harrison and Cisco were _alive_. Harrison and Cisco couldn’t _see_ him. To Harrison and Cisco, _he did not exist._ Hartley choked on a sob and watched as they conversed in low, sad voices, and once perhaps he might have felt a stab of sick satisfaction of seeing Harrison reap what he sewed, once he might have been angry. ‘Once’ was a pretty far off place right now.   
  
“Any news?” Hartley vaguely heard Cisco ask. Harrison shook his head, eyes lowered, and Hartley could see the pain kept shuttered behind a straight back and still hands. Hartley had never been able to keep his hands that still, _quiet hands_ , his mother had preached behind closed doors and lowered blinds, but Hartley had remained in his shaky, anxious, _loud_ state since he was a child, and had only ever accepted it once he noticed that Harrison sometimes did it too. It had been one of the things that connected them.  
  
“None. I- I don’t know if we’ll find him, Cisco.” Hartley walked closer to them, circling around to stand at Cisco’s side, this at least was _familiar_ , at least he and Cisco had eventually become polite to each other, and he figured if anyone would see him, it would be Harrison.   
  
Harrison had _always_ seen him  
  
“It’s been a week, no one's seen him, he's not in the hospital, and nothing come up on facial recognition.” Cisco murmured “Dr Wells, no one but us is even _looking_ , and-”  
  
“No, I know. He’s probably dead. Otherwise, he'd have- I'd- I'd _know_.” Hartley frowned, a sick sensation crawling down his spine. “Jerrie came to visit me.”   
  
Jerrie.  
  
 _His_ sister.  
  
 _That was his sister._   
  
They were talking about _him_. _Harrison was talking about him,_ his eyes were red rimmed and Cisco’s hands were shaking, they were talking about _him_. They thought he was dead. Hartley choked on a strangled laugh “But I’m right here.” He whispered.   
  
“I miss him.” Harrison murmured softly. Hartley’s lips parted, Harrison had sent him away, Harrison had betrayed him, Harrison had _broken_ him. Harrison missed him. “I really, really _miss_ him.” Harrison’s voice broke.   
  
“I’m right here.” Hartley called desperately. “I’m _right here_ , _I’M RIGHT HERE._ ” He yelled, voice hoarse and shaking.  
  
“So do I. I didn’t think I would. And I didn’t, but now…” Cisco trailed off, his fists clenching. “It’s _final_.”   
  
Hartley stepped in front of him, and reached out, only for his hand to get stuck a centimetre from Cisco’s arm. He froze, eyes wide. Cisco flinched lightly, eyes widening slightly, stiffening and their eyes met, Hartley’s breath hitched.   
  
“No, _no-_ ” Hartley reached out again, his fingertips caught between Cisco’s skin and the air. “Please, _please_ , I’m right here, Cisco, _Cisquito_ \- I’m _here_ , _I’m right here.”_  
  
Cisco stared, horrified, at him, and Hartley saw his reflection in his eyes, he was bloodied, hair matted and clothes stained horrible, _terrible_ crimson, his eyes were so wide and bright and glassy that he barely recognised them. His glasses were cracked and his skin was pale, almost blue.   
  
No wonder he was scared.   
  
Hartley took a step back, shaking hands flying into a defensive position as he saw Cisco flinch, watched the desire to look away dawn in his eyes. Hartley trembled at the thought of being _unseen_ again, being so utterly, desperately _alone_. “No, no, I didn’t mean to scare you. Please don’t- _don’t_ _leave_ _me_ , please, _Cisco_ , I’m so- oh God, _don’t leave, don’t-”_  
  
Cisco’s lips parted.   
  
He looked away.   
  
The spell broke, and Hartley let out a terrified whimper as his reflection left Cisco’s eyes and when he looked back up, he looked directly at Harrison, and straight through Hartley. “Are you alright, Cisco?” Harrison asked.   
  
Cisco blinked, frowning. “Yes- I, uh, thought I saw…No, no it’s fine. I’m fine. It was _nothing_.” Hartley’s legs gave out beneath him as he collapsed onto the floor, shaking, noiseless sobs tearing through his chest as Cisco stepped through him, closer to Harrison.   
  
_He was alone._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment!


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